Students Create 'Dear Me' Video To Warn Against Going To Law School

Law school students want their 16-year-old selves to know that law school will not be fun

Jon Ng, a third year law school student at the University of Calgary, recently made a video warning about the dangers of law school.

The satire video features a number of his classmates, and children of law students at the university, talking about how they'll alienate friends who aren't in law school when they cite case law at the Olive Garden, among other things. A small child in the video says "I want you to know, because of law school, I haven't seen my daddy in three years," as he holds up a photo of his family. (This line by the young boy has since been edited out)

Ng said it's a parody of the "Dear 16-year-old Me" video produced by the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund to raise awareness for steps to take to prevent skin cancer. Ng said he thought that video was incredibly smart and actually studied engineering with one of the cancer survivors that appeared in it.

Ng's video was made for the University of Calgary annual Law Show talent show, which takes place in March. Ng said he's seen a lot of videos around the internet of law school students flaunting the prestige of being in law school, but he wanted to take a different route and poke fun at himself and fellow law school students.

"I much prefer finding the humour that gets lost in the hard work and flashy egos," Ng said in an email. "Don't get me wrong, I'm incredibly proud of being a law student, but if a friend told me they wanted to go to law school, I'd sit them down for a long chat."

Ng wrote the script himself, and he even got one of his law professors to appear in the video.

"He immediately agreed to appearing in the video and surprisingly had no questions about the morose lines I wanted him to read," Ng said. "In fact, he actually polished off one of the lines to make it sound even more intimidating."

No one in the video objected to the lines because a lot of what they were saying is true, Ng said.

And by the way, yes, Ng, actually was president of his student council.